Category: Cooking & Eating - Page 7

Broccoli flowers (flashback!)

15 Dec 20217 Dec 2007 by Mike (tfb)

No real farming action today, but here’s an alternate entry from 2-Oct-2007—never let a perfectly serviceable post go to waste!: On my way to seed saving, I tend to let things go to seed! Here, the secondary shoots in a bed of Early Dividend broccoli have exploded, the tiny green beads turning into a gently rolling sea of miniature flowers on long thin stems. Unfortunately, the eventual seed from this hybrid variety wouldn’t be reliable…but it’s a step in the right direction! Also going to seed around the field: lettuce, radish, cauliflower… There’s some cleaning up to do. :)

Update: As mentioned in the comments below, these little guys are delicious as edible flowers, slightly sweet, tasting mildly of broccoli. We take them to market to offer as a free garnish for salad mix.

Basic barbecue

1 Oct 201130 Sep 2007 by Mike (tfb)

In my continuing series of small, curious steps backward, yesterday, I acted impulsively on an idea that’d come to me a couple of days earlier. Instead of the usual junk food “treat” that’s become a Saturday afternoon ritual on the way back from the farmers’ market , we stopped in at a local, independent butcher and bought small portions of beef, pork, chicken and four types of sausage, and at the mega-hardware store, a cheap, old style barbecue ($20CDN). Back at the farm, the meat got skewered, along with farm onions, mostly hot peppers, and three types of zucchini—a prepared rub on the meat, salt, pepper and olive oil on the veggies—and then it was over the coals instead of the usual propane treatment. There was enough to do it all over again late this morning for…brunch, to feed four. It may be a little silly, enjoying every turn to the seemingly simpler, like doing away with fast food and propane tanks in favor of a marginally more basic cookery, but it feels…good. I think this is tiny farming-induced behavior. Demand simplicity!!

Fish in the field

3 Feb 202220 Jul 2007 by Mike (tfb)

A different order of fieldwork: eating up the leftovers! A couple of rainbow trout left over from yesterday had to be used, so I coated them in cornmeal, pan-fried ’em in olive oil and butter, with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, squeezed some lemon over, and took ’em out to be picked at in the field. The trout was joined by leftover roasted potatoes from last night’s dinner harvest, and fresh flat leaf parsley. Fast, no fuss (my cooking skills are so far…basic!). The photo’s kinda funny. I set the plate down on a path to get the parsley, which is growing two feet away, snapped the shot, then noticed what all was in it: a little pigweed growing on the left, some mallow on the right, and grass all around, my weed friends looking on… Rain: another intense storm overnight finally gave us just over an inch (25mm), and then gave way to this beautiful, sunshiny day. Still, that’s only about 40mm in 40 days!

Rabbit food

4 Sep 20085 May 2007 by Mike (tfb)

Around here, there is a definite segment of the population for whom salad greens, while accepted as possibly “good” for you, are not really considered proper human food. I might even think it’s an old school, meat-and-potatoes farmer thing, though I haven’t chatted with enough farmers to…generalize. In any case, I’m an all-new first generation farmer and to me, salads are great! This is the first dinner salad harvested this year, picked from the early lettuce aisles. It’s a mix of arugula and four lettuces: Simpson Elite, Granada, Red Salad Bowl, and Sierra, each with its own color, texture and flavor. Lots of fresh veggie variety is an excellent concept. :) Tastes good, too!